Positive Health Online

My quest for some years has been for a model which will bind us all together in a friendly, cohesive schema. Not only that, but most important of all (to me), one which will persuade open-minded fellows of my profession that it is safe to be a little radical; that what appears whacky and weird is built, after all, upon a cogent, demonstrable and inter-related whole.

I have for some time been interested in what may be called the "philosophical" aspect of medicine, with its new insights and resulting imperatives. I do not see myself as an "alternative" practitioner so much as an enlightened and free-thinking mainstream doctor.

Many disciplines and models have entered the healing arena in the decades since I graduated from medical school. Most alternatives claim the banner of holism, yet none in themselves is the complete answer. Some practitioners see differing domains as somehow mutually exclusive. There is a clear tendency to rivalry, perhaps based on the fact that most alternative practitioners work privately and feel they are competing for potential clients. Yet withal everyone claims the right to be disparaging of conventional medicine because of the emphasis on drug (commercial) profits. Isn't this being just a little bit hypocritical?

My quest for some years has been for a model which will bind us all together in a friendly, cohesive schema. Not only that, but most important of all (to me), one which will persuade open-minded fellows of my profession that it is safe to be a little radical; that what appears whacky and weird is built, after all, upon a cogent, demonstrable and inter-related whole. Enter my concept of FOUR DIMENSIONAL WELLNESS

First Dimension

This is the body physical and its material surroundings. The vast majority of modern medicine works only at this level. Here we find bacteria, viruses and parasites – tangibles. It was a great advance in science to discover that specific diseases were associated with particular micro-organisms. Indeed, this was such a satisfying discovery that many doctors still fail to look beyond its comfortable bounds.

On the same (physical) level, there are also other pathogenic triggers, such as toxins which damage living tissue and the problems of modern biologically-stressful exposures such as radiation, jet travel and chemical pollution. One could perhaps wryly christen it "The Encounter Theory of Disease", harking back to Pasteur.

It is inadequate one-dimensional medicine and allows no place for individuality, beyond the concept of the person's own degree of "resistance" or susceptibility to disease.

Even worse, there seems to be a fixation on effects and little real search for fundamental causes, both at the theoretical and the diagnostic level. Answers and explanations are often shallow, reductionist and too out of touch with the tumble-down or "cascade" effect of illness. What the hospital clinician sees is often only the final stage in a complex sequence of events which have steadily eroded the body's ability to cope. It matters little how exquisitely clever your scientific detection of the final stage of this process, if you totally ignore all the earlier processes.

The initiator of an illness may have nothing to do with the final end-organ failure. If my own work in the field of clinical ecology has shown anything, it is that there are very many more initiators of disease on this level than had been previously supposed.[1]

Second Dimension

Most aware practitioners today recognise that disease, even that caused by notable bacteria and viruses or other harmful encounters, are a function of the history and susceptibility of the individual, rather than the magnitude of the insult. We can speak of the "soil" and the "seed".

The most important aspect of soil (terrain) discovered to date is that of "stress" or mental disharmony. Quite simply, almost any patient who becomes ill has gone out of balance in some way in his or her life. The classic study of Holmes and Rahe in relation to life events put this firmly into the medical canon, once and for all. They were even able to quantify, in a limited way, the predictability of disease following disturbing life upheavals.[2]

However, I would point out that wellness of mind implies a great deal more than absence of psycho-somatic ills. A positive self-image, abundant zest for life and sound attitudes to work, relationships, family and real-time world events is very much a matter of integrated wholeness and should be everyone's right. To be less than radiantly happy and fulfilled is to be under stress, to some degree; think about this.

Third Dimension

Here we move up to the level of subtle energy fields surrounding the body. We do not yet understand these fields fully, though they are clearly complex and challenging to measure. It seems probable that the aura is nothing more than the electric field and not nearly so arcane and mysterious as it is held to be (many people can see this "aura" around buildings and rocks). The electric field is detectable by Kirlian photography.

More interesting is the bio-magnetic field. This is more likely to be what is sensed by aware healers. Far from being a mystery, we would expect such a magnetic field, given the amount of electrical movement going on in the body – for example the heart and other muscles. Elementary physics tells us that where electricity flows, a magnetic field is induced. Sensitive instruments can pick up the heart's magnetic induction field from several yards away.

But the really exciting work is being done with quantum effects. Special devices called SQUIDS (superconducting quantum interference devices) are able to show hitherto undetectable fields in association with the body (and indeed organisms down to microbial size). Einstein himself talked of "subtle energies", meaning they were theoretical physical forces but not in his day measurable. As technology has advanced, we can now encounter them in reality.[3]

And just as I would like to press conventional doctors that they MUST wake up to what we are encountering beyond the comfortable bounds of science, so too must alternative practitioners brace themselves for the reality that the boundaries of science are rapidly expanding and over-running what was once thought to be magical, esoteric and other-dimensional.

Beyond the physical manipulation and realignment of these fields, as in aura work, Reiki, acupuncture and so on, there opens the vast possibility of bio-magnetic and resonance medicine. Devices already exist which can detect the radio-signal of tissue disorder and stressors. Treatments can even be matched to the disease and a harmonious signal obtained to confirm efficacy.

Healthy signals can be enhanced and pathological signals cancelled out, with obvious therapeutic potential. This so-called bio-resonance effect almost certainly takes place at the quantal level.[4]

Fourth Dimension

Finally, we pass over the tenuous bridge of quantum energies into territory beyond all scientific and physical reality, to enter the world of the spirit, soul or psyche. This brings the real meaning of life in all its many forms and purposes, into the proper purview of any healer or physician. Proper understanding of the nature of life and consciousness is as much a part of understanding disease as any of the lower dimensions.

The traditional view of the shaman has always been that disease only takes place when the soul fragmentises and life particles wander off alone. Many cases exist where recovery has required nothing more than a journey to collect the missing parts of the self and re-integrate them with the whole being. In almost all native societies of the world there are techniques for this "soul retrieval". US anthropologist Michael Harner has studied shamanism world-wide and concludes that the similarities in approach in very widely diverse cultures are so striking they could hardly be assumed to have converged by chance.[5]

Witch Doctors

It is easy to relegate these matters to a "religious" context but this is to miss the point. Really what we derisorily call witch doctors are right – we must assume that spiritual Being is the basis of our Earthly lives and that this must, above all, be in harmony with creation. If it isn't, one can only expect trouble and physical disease is merely an aspect of this disharmony.

Here at least it could be argued that those we arrogantly call primitive tribesmen and women have a better perspective on themselves than we in this supposedly "civilised" world have. We may have the antibiotics and the CAT scans, but they may have a greater truth. They at least recognise the essential spirituality of their own nature and accord this aspect of their lives more importance than the merely physical.

Mental Pollution

As a doctor who made a name in the field of environmental pollution and its dire effects on health, I have expanded my concepts to include these far wider areas of interest. I now offer the term "Mental and Spiritual Pollution", which seems to me to demonstrate a certain semantic consistency. The space of Being is, after all, the FIRST ENVIRONMENT and we need to look after it better than we do.

Any decent physician will soon note that sick patients are not happy patients. By the time disease manifests itself, the inner space has become discordant to a considerable degree and the patient is generally far off-centre. You could say, to adapt Claude Bernard, that "mental homoeostasis" is lost. The natural human resilience to life's knocks and the related corrective mechanisms which abound have already failed and been overwhelmed.

One can consider then that personal pollution of the inner space has had its toxic effects and that what appears outwardly as disease is but a secondary manifestation of this self-toxicity.

Society Ills: The Fifth Dimension?

There is at least one more aspect of health, which I am considering labelling The Fifth Dimension. This is the matter of society's problems (or "societal disharmony" as the Americans might term it). There is no real meaning in saying one is physical healthy and mentally happy, if the society in which we live is sick.

What price fitness and verve where an individual could be killed or imprisoned unjustly for what he or she believes? It would hardly be possible to conceive of true happiness in a society which engaged in acts of war, violence, crime, incest, sexual abuse and economic duress, such as many people are forced to endure today.

A truly comprehensive medicine of body, mind and soul would perforce need to come up with solutions to problems at this level too.

As Rudolph Steiner propounded this ethic: "The healthy social life is found when in the mirror of each human soul the whole community finds its reflection and when in the community the virtue of each one is living".

Suggested Further Reading

1. The Complete Guide to Food Allergy and Environmental Illness, Dr Keith Mumby, Thorsons, London, 1993.
2. Holmes, T. H. and Rahe, R. H. The Social Maladjustment Rating Scale, J Psychosomatic Res, 11(1967): 213–18, discussed in Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, Kenneth R. Pelletier, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1978.
3. Measuring the Fields of Life, J. L. Oschman, Journal of Body Work and Movement Therapies, 1(2), Jan 1997: 117–122 (part 2 of a series).
4. Vibrational Medicine, Richard Gerber, Bear and Co., Santa Fe, 1988.
5. The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner, Harper and Row, NY, 1980.